Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

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Without Literary Merit

I sent my l limerick from PO 344 (“There was a young girl named Begonia”) to cartoonist Tony Cochran, who kindly wrote back: “I love it!!! It is useless and without literary merit, just like me! I will probably steal it. Tony Cochran”

            I am huge fan of his cartoon, Agnes, and hope he does steal it.

A Practical Education

Thanks to Pat Geiger, a sister English grad student and teaching colleague when we were mere tadpoles, for this item about a new class at The U. of Akron, Profiling Serial Killers. I guess it’s another step in becoming a high-level trade school. As Bill Habbeck, a 20-year-old student from Hartville, said, ''Compared with math and English, this is stuff you can actually use.'' Another student, Anthony Tomei of Akron, said, ''She teaches you to guess. You can't figure out anything if you don't guess.” Yep, you don’t need to speak, write, or calculate as long as you can guess. Somehow I think the students misunderstood the instructor. But logicians need not enroll.

            The journalist, who possibly graduated from Akron U. without needing language or logic, wrote that the teacher profiles serial killers as people who have no “controls on their inhibitions”. As Rod Stewart sang to a “virgin child”, “Just let your inhibitions run wild.” I would think serial killers already have their inhibitions thoroughly suppressed, but I’m just guessing.

Nonument

I don’t know who coined this word but a Cinci blogger recorded “nonument” as an empty store or building left standing too long.

And Now for a Hymn

In Hank Williams, Sr.’s great song “I Saw the Light” he sings “for strait is the gate and narrow the way”. Strait here is not to be confused with straight. Strait means tight and narrow, like a strait jacket or the Straits of Gibraltar.

You Can’t Say That or That

Politics always makes everyone crazy one way or another. In this week’s off-year election, people find it hard to speak or to listen clearly.

            A Cincinnati Enquirer headline read, “Tuesday's voter: Older, whiter”. The idea is that in off-year elections, most of the people who bother to vote on things like city councilmen and local taxes and other uninteresting but locally important issues are older, and also white, and often live in the suburbs. That’s a fact. But several people were mightily offended at this headline and complained to the paper. Imagine if the headline was “Voters are blacker”, they whined. Well, what if it was? Where’s the insult? Do readers imagine that voters were individually becoming more white? Are they offended by the facts of voter turnout? I don’t get it.

            And then there was the return of the “retardation” squeamishness. This week’s election presented a tax levy for an MRDD program because it was too late to legally change the agency name to DD. “Developmentally Disabled” includes “Mental Retardation” but it is felt (not thought) that “retardation” is offensive. The term “mentally retarded” was a pseudo-scientific sounding replacement for old terms such as simple, backward, slow, or natural (just as “developmentally disabled” replaced the earlier euphemism “handicapped”). But now the MR euphemism grates on some people’s ears, as if it’s an insult. You might as well say that “broken bone” is offensive to people who break a bone.

            Some people can’t speak the truth without twisting themselves into a knot. The truth is that some disabilities are mental. Nobody’s fault, but many can’t be cured, corrected, or changed. Perhaps there used to be more acceptance of this kind of natural “diversity” when people weren’t so exercised as to how to speak of different kinds of people.

            There will always be people who abuse others verbally, as when schoolyard bullies call each other “tards” whether or not they are in fact mentally handicapped. If the term “retarded” is retired and replaced with something more vague, the bullies will find other words.

The Poetry Corner

We’ve had mice and bought mouse traps. So far we’ve caught half a dozen mice and carried them, both live and late, over the hill at the end of the street to give them a natural burial in piles of leaves, or possibly a chance for escape and recovery in a couple of cases. I feel sympathy for the little guys, yet we can’t have mice in the kitchen. The live trap didn’t attract any mice.

            Robert Burns turned up mouse’s home with his plough and wrote the famous poem “To a Mouse” expressing the human sense of compassion for the fellow creatures we disturb and kill. At one time, I even left house spiders alone, thinking they would eat other insects, until I saw that they bit my children. I had a friend who was a very clean nurse but also a Buddhist and like Albert Schweitzer, who escorted the flies outside, would carry cockroaches outside. It’s not a matter of whether spiders and mice have a right to live, it’s a matter of self-defense.

            Last year in Scotland, Carol Anderson, owner of Bridgefield Books in Stonehaven, mentioned Robert Burns and said no girl would have a defense against a man with such poetry. True. But Burns had to farm, and we have to keep vermin out of our house. (I’m not sure but I think the book Carol is holding in the photo in the link maybe be about Burns; can’t quite make it out.)

Go-To Brit

Mike Sykes wasn’t familiar with the expression “go-to” as in “my go-to Brit”. I explained that it means my expert source (on British English).

            As such, he says he’s never heard “to shop around the corner” meaning to be gay, though he searched around and found one example in the Guardian. He also found more on kludge, and also dug up a long list of programming epigrams, one of which is,

Get into a rut early: Do the same processes the same way. Accumulate idioms. Standardize. The only difference (!) between Shakespeare and you was the size of his idiom list — not the size of his vocabulary.

I think not. Shakespeare originated a lot of idioms, but he did more than that.

            Regarding movie remakes, Mike commented on a very early Hitchcock movie, The 39 Steps, which he thinks is awful. I’ve seen it and it has a weak plot (and I don’t think it’s been remade), but has a period charm for me. But you’d probably have to be a huge Hitchcock aficionado to really like it.

            Interestingly, both Mike and Dave DaBee were surprised at the Acorn story. I wouldn’t expect Mike to be at all aware of Acorn, and American Dave has been very busy with his big new projects and can’t keep up with all the news. So Dave didn’t know the story — perhaps it was skipped past quickly in the major media — and Mike couldn’t quite believe it. Regarding which, see my Examiner story below, “News sources editorialize by omission”.

The  Gritty Bits: My Week on Examiner.com

News sources editorialize by omission

Friday, November 6th, 2009

The Cincinnati Enquirer ran two stories this morning about the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, yesterday by an...

Rally for Rifqa Bary in Columbus on November 16

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

A rally is scheduled to support Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old girl who said her life was threatened after she...

Anita Dunn speaks for Obama

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Obama's communications director, Anita Dunn, said her favorite "philosophers" are Mother Theresa and...

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ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Lon Don Undone

Mike Sykes, our go-to Brit, wrote about whether “Lon Don” is pronounced like “Don John” in the south of England:

In a word: No! I've never heard of it, and although I come from the north I've heard plenty of southerners, not only on TV, and I've never heard the second syllable stressed. Many natives call it Lunnun, or Lunn'n (if there's a difference). Round here it's mostly Lundun.
            What intrigues me it that a son & family have just moved from London to Loddon — change one consonant and the vowel sound changes from u to o. Oh well.

I guess if we went into the histories of the names London and Loddon we’d find the key to the pronunciation and spelling.

Possibly the Lon Don man I heard was a foreigner who’d been there a long time but not long enough. Or he may have had a speech impediment, or suffered the effects of a stroke. Some years ago I had a burst blood vessel in one eye which probably signaled something else going on inside the brain, and my speech slowed slightly (a disadvantage in Boston where they talk fast and think everyone from west of Philadelphia is a farmer, i.e. stupid, partly because everyone else not from New York or New Jersey speaks more slowly) and one particular phrase was noticeably harder to enunciate at normal speed: “That’s a good idea.” Apparently I say that often enough that I noticed I couldn’t spit it out fast enough. It’s better now. But you never know what’s going on with people. “Hey, are you deaf?!” Maybe. Congenitally deaf people not only can’t hear, they don’t speak exactly the same as everyone else either.

Speaking of British English, I have a scrap of paper in my pile noting that the expression “to shop around the corner” means to be gay.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Shakespeare and Che

This summer in PO 334 I wrote about a production of Romeo and Juliet that used political posters in its minimal set design, a sort of communist/capitalist theme that had nothing to do with the play. In a 2000 movie production of Hamlet set in contemporary New York City, Hamlet had a Che Guevara poster on the wall of his very expensive apartment. Even had Che been the sort of hero that so many imagine, this radical icon in the prince’s apartment makes Hamlet out to be a deluded juvenile rather than a young man wrestling with truth and shadows. These kinds of stage settings show more about today’s designers and producers than about Shakespeare’s intentions. Shakespeare didn’t write about econo-political systems. Modern stage settings work OK but the producers sometimes want to ignore the real themes of morality and spiritual struggle. Everyone seems to have been infected by the deconstructionist interpretation of everything in the world in class/race/gender political terms.

Thus Ammon Shea wrote on old dictionaries:

The view that it is necessary to use dictionaries from the historical era with which you are most concerned is apparently shared by certain judges, especially those justices on the United States Supreme Court who have embraced the constitutional theory of originalism. Of these justices, Antonin Scalia in particular has shown a marked habit of citing older reference works. …in addition to using modern standard dictionaries, Scalia employed Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), James Buchanan’s Linguae Britannicae (1757), Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), John Kersey’s New English Dictionary (1702), Thomas Sheridan’s General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) and John Walker’s Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) — and that was just in the opinions he wrote from 1988 to 1992.

Judges should be learned in history as well, of course, to understand how people thought 200+ years ago and what they meant by their words, which may not be exactly what, say, David Letterman means, for instance.

Ammonia and Mutual Funds

Agnes, my alter ego, tells her friend she’s starting a syndicated column:

My syndicated column will be humor mixed with household hints and dovetailed into political opinion.

            Wow!

Yes, wow…It will be one-stop shopping for all of your column needs … and I will do it all in less than one hundred words with few syllables. OK … what rhymes with ammonia and mutual funds?

            All that and poetry, too…what’s not to like?

I have risen (or sunk) to Agnes’ challenge. Here’s my entry:

There once was a gal named Begonia

Who cleaned Wall Street out with ammonia.

She’d lost by the tons

In mutual funds

But said, “Rather clean ya than stone ya.”

Visual Thesaurus

Visual Thesaurus is an entertaining web site on words with features such as word lists and word mapping. They also publish a magazine for subscribers, but you can get a free 14-day trial.

The Full Socratian Monty

Now more than ever we need a good argument clinic. Here’s a web site on Socratian dialogue based on Monty Python’s argument clinic, where you can learn to discuss truth, justice, courage, and beauty.

While you’re at it, check out this blog in Latin that Tom Simon sent. You don’t think I really understand it, do you?

Kludge

You technical people probably know that “kludge” is a mechanical fix lacking in elegance. The OED lists 1962 as earliest appearance of kludge, though the German word “kluge” goes back further, at least to WWII. It’s like mechanical sludge. I learned the word from a fabulous web site called There, I fixed it. I’ve contributed my own photo to this site though I don’t know if or when they’ll use it. Since I don’t send attachments with Parvum Opus, I’ll explain: This week I took a photo of a house with the siding missing and the windows covered with plywood painted white that had sort of portholes badly cut out of them.

This Week’s Intellectual Dipstick Gauge

In a friend’s Facebook thread about Margaret Mead, I commented that her research or her theories had been discredited to some degree, and someone else quoted Derek Freeman, who described incongruities between Mead's published research and his observations of Samoans:

Freeman: In my early work I had, in my unquestioning acceptance of Mead's writings, tended to dismiss all evidence that ran counter to her findings. By the end of 1942, however, it had become apparent to me that much of what she had written about the inhabitants of Manu'a in eastern Samoa did not apply to the people of western Samoa.... Many educated Samoans, especially those who had attended college in New Zealand, had become familiar with Mead's writings about their culture ... [and] entreated me, as an anthropologist, to correct her mistaken depiction of the Samoan ethos.

Facebook guy: Anyway ... so what? Pretty much all of Freud's ideas have been [sic — discredited?] as well ... doesn't make his research any less important.

Truth is the “so what” trigger. This is what makes discussion so difficult. It doesn’t matter what’s true or false, it’s what you like to believe or are used to believing, or what or who is “important”.

Multitasking

This slightly edited conversation appeared on Overheard in New York:

Woman to friends: Girl, you know how to do some rollers?
Friend: Damn, honey, I don't know how to do none of that s**t. I could braid, I could perm, but that's it. You know that b***h Julia, she Mexican. She could do it. She know how to multitask.

The woman used “multitask” to mean knowing how to do several things, rather than doing several things at the same time. After all, you can’t roll, braid, and perm hair simultaneously. I wonder if this is a harbinger of the way this word is going to go in the future?

Not Quite Right

<|||>  “…the most legendary creature of all time.” Are there degrees of legendariness? A creature is either a legend or it’s not. However, “legendary” is used sloppily to mean famous or impressive, which isn’t quite the same thing.

<|||>  “the judge commands authority.” A judge may have authority, but he may command respect. Authority comes with the position. Respect or admiration may be commanded by behavior.

<|||>  TV decorator: “Those are foundry parts native to this region.” Factory equipment is made, not born.

Lon Don

On TV a man from south of London pronounced it to rhyme with Don John rather than Fund’n. The vowels and the syllable stress were different, including the very slight pause between syllables. Is this pronunciation common in that part of England?

Demonstrative

Did you know that the root of the word “monster” is the same as of demonstrate, admonish, and monitor? They come from the Latin monstrum, divine portent of misfortune. Hmm. The outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual something or other? Halloween is coming, watch out.

Not Defunct

Over the years I have quoted from Bryan Garner’s Modern American Usage from time to time. Garner is a lawyer and his tips on language are well thought out. Here’s his e-mail about the newest version of his book:

            If you’re a fan of my usage tips and Garner’s Modern American Usage…I have a favor to ask of you as a loyal reader: In the next few hours or days, would you please go to www.amazon.com or www.bn.com and buy one or more copies of the new third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage as holiday presents? In fact, keep this gift possibility in mind through the end of the year, won't you?

            I need your help in sending a message to the major bookstore chains: they’re not stocking the book because they’ve told Oxford University Press that they consider usage guides a “defunct category.” It’s maddeningly unbelievable. Please help me show them that they’re stupendously wrong.

            Meanwhile, in the coming months you might ask about the book when you’re in a bookstore: ask the managers why they don’t stock copies, and encourage them to do so.

            If you’re curious to see what effect you’re having, watch the rankings on Amazon.com or Bn.com in coming days and weeks. We’ll be alerting the major chains to those numbers, and we want to get as close to the top 50 as we can. If you're trying to order and see that the book is labeled "out of stock," order anyway: the effort is also to ensure that the online booksellers keep adequate stocks.

            In return for this favor — it’s a grassroots effort — I’ll be happy to inscribe copies that you send to LawProse for that purpose, if you (1) include a filled-out FedEx airbill for returning them to you, and (2) suggest an appropriate inscription.

            Thank you for whatever help you can provide in this endeavor to show booksellers that the concern for good English is alive and well.

            Bryan A. Garner

The bookstores should not make “usage” a defunct category. Usage guides are not dictionaries, thesauri, or grammar books, and they serve a valuable purpose for those who enjoy language.

My Gritty Bits in This Week’s Examiner.Com

Cap and Trade = Scam and Greed

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Standing in front of the pictures by Norman Rockwell depicting our four freedoms, Mike Carey, President of the Ohio...
Prisoners of war committed hate crimes against non-protected groups

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

If Guantanamo prisoners are tried in American courts, will they be accused of hate crimes? They hate Westerners,...
The Freedom Center's "us/them" message

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The Freedom Center is mounting an exhibit about lynchings of blacks in the United States between 1882 and 1968, to...
The "So What?" approach to truth is the path to demagoguery

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Scrutiny of sociologist Margaret Mead's research in Samoa cast doubt on her conclusions as to the freewheeling sex...
Fewer people are useful today

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Helen Keller was a supporter of the eugenics movement, and said, “Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Speak Softly and Carry a Nerf Stick

Mark Steyn wrote about Obama’s Nobel Prize, and quoted a letter from Judi Romaine to The Times :

"I'm afraid I've registered into a very conversative* [sic], fear-based world here but I'd like to suggest the incredible notion we all create our worlds in our conversations. What are you building by maligning rather than creating discourses for workability? Bravo to Obama and others working for people, however it appears to cynics."

I guess this means if you say only nice things, only nice things will happen? By “conversative” does she mean conversation? At first read it seems to have something to do with “converse” or opposition. Which is what conversation’s all about, silly girl.

In one of my Examiner.com bits this week, I wrote about the fact that so much political commentary these days is about political language, name-calling, definitions and redefinitions, and manipulation of language in general. This is nothing new, of course. Perhaps you’ve heard that those who organize and attend Tea Party protests to the health care bill et al are called “teabaggers”. This has an obscene meaning which you can look up for yourself if you care to. Name-calling is one way of trivializing and ridiculing your opponents to reduce their credibility, and to avoid dealing with the issues themselves, a technique of Saul Alinsky’s, though he didn’t invent it. Maybe it’s a step up from demonizing one’s opponents.

By the way, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize recipient went to Rigoberta Menchu, who falsely claimed authorship of a 1982 autobiography which was later found to have been written by French Marxist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. I had heard that Menchu’s story was largely fictional, but didn’t know she had a ghost writer. When the fraud was discovered, neither the Nobel committee nor the teachers who’d been using the book in classes really cared. They thought it was “truth” even if it wasn’t true. It’s hard getting at the truth through lies, but if you’re conversative enough…

Quoth the Maven

Ben Zimmer wrote a good article on the late William Safire, language maven. Maven is a Yiddish word for expert, and Safire kidded himself by calling one of his books Quoth the Maven.

The Middle Wife

David Rogerson passed along a funny story that’s been making the rounds of the ‘Net for a long time called The Middle Wife, ascribed to an anonymous infant school teacher. There’s no way to trace its origins, but it’s quite realistic in the verbal misfires children make. The story goes that a little girl in show-and-tell acted out her mother’s labor with a pillow stuffed under her sweater and talked about the day her brother was born, the highlights being:

“He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord.”

“My Dad called the middle wife.”

“[My brother] was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mum's play-centre (placenta) so there must be a lot of toys inside there.”

            This reminds me of when one of my sons at age 4 excitedly recognized his favorite characters in The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Tin and Doorknob.

Mike Sykes Cracks Down

I wrote:

Theodore Dalrymple wrote about “antisocial” vs. “hate crimes” in the UK: “the seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is.” For example, a murder is worse if the victim is gay or disabled, etc. Why?

Mike wrote:

That's rubbish. It's quite clear from Dalrymple's quote that the seriousness of a crime is dependent on its motive, among other things. And I suspect even he would regard the assassination of a president (for whom he has voted) as more serious than the killing of a down-and-out.

Not because it’s a “hate crime”, though, even if the killer is seething with political hatred. It’s more akin to the way cops don’t give any slack to cop killers.

I wrote:

Deviancy or deviance is a statistical term meaning variant on average behavior, though it has also come to mean psychological perversion.

Mike sent this correction:

Neither the OED nor dictionary.com suggest that deviance (or its synonym deviancy) has been used in statistics. The word there is deviation, as in standard deviation.

I never did take a statistics class.

I wrote:

"The people who built America did it with both guns and religion."

Mike wrote:

…  and by getting the native population out of the way, and clearing the plains of buffalo, and in some places slavery. Not that they were the only people to behave that way of course. But some nations have managed to move on more than others.

I don’t know why the population isn’t pouring out of our borders as I write. Anyway, I didn’t mean to rag on England, because we have some of the same problems today, though perhaps Mike and I don’t have the same sense of what’s a problem and what’s not.

Sydney J. Harris

I used to read Sydney J. Harris in the Akron Beacon Journal when I was in college, and his short columns on whatever was on his mind, more than anything else in the paper, for some reason made me want to write a syndicated column. Unfortunately I didn’t get on it until the newspapers started to wane; nowadays they don’t need a constant content feed. Harris has passed on and I can’t remember anything he wrote, except one thing that irritated me, which was that men get more attractive as they age, what with character lines and gray at the temples, but women deteriorate. I assume he was speaking of himself and his poor wife. Of course older men’s attractiveness is often helped along by their success and money (e.g. Hugh Hefner). (This does not apply to Fred, who shines like a good deed in a naughty world, as Shakespeare wrote.)

            Nevertheless, I got a collection of Harris’s columns from the library and found something I vaguely remembered over the years but couldn’t place. He had fun with pairs or trios of adjectives that we use to praise ourselves and condemn others. Example of two-parters:

My son is “high-spirited,” but yours is a “roughneck.”

The three-parters were the ones I kept trying to remember, in the I-you-he format; they have a nice weight and balance:

I vote for the man, not the label; you vote for the personality that appeals to you; he votes for a golden-tongued demagogue.

            How about: “I am distinguished looking; you look lived-in; he’s a sway-backed, pigeon-chested, pot-bellied, rheumy-eyed wreck.”

            You can make a party game out of this. See below.

Quote of the Week

Helen Keller was a supporter of the eugenics movement, and said, “Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.”

            Are you being useful enough? “Usefulness” justifies all abortions, of course, since embryos are all pre-useful, parasitical actually, and their futures are unpredictable, though the aborted tissues can be made use of to patch up other people who are more useful. Old people who aren’t making money, but are costing money, can’t be said to be useful, even if they have so-called “wisdom”, which you can’t measure. The best that can be said for them is that they provide jobs for the medical profession.

            Keller herself would have been a candidate for waste removal in some times and places; I suppose she thought she was useful because she went on to write and speak publically, but she was never self-sufficient.

            Fred corrected me once when I said I wanted to be “useful”; he thought I should say “helpful”, the idea being that human beings should not “use” each other, because we are ends in ourselves.

            I am useful; you serve as a bad example; he’s a waste of space.

The Gritty Bits: My Week in Examiner.com

Cincinnati Tea Party in the rain, October 14, 2009

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Tea Partiers' statement: "On a cold wet day, Patriots held their ground and rallied for freedom, while most...

Sharia law in Ohio

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old apostate, is safe in Florida until October 27, according to Pamela Geller. Rifqa is the...
Plain speech is a rare and unwelcome commodity

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Especially since the presidential election, a larger than ever proportion of political commentary is about the...

Libraries should focus on books

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

The November ballot will contain a tax levy to support Hamilton County libraries. Libraries are among the most...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Thematic Nudity

Cheryl S. sent this explanation of the “thematic elements” movie rating:

With regard to The Time Traveler's Wife, I'm guessing that the reference is to a scene where the time traveler first meets the young girl who will, in the future, become his wife (when she becomes an adult).  He has no clothes on.  For some reason, when he time travels his clothes are always left behind. 

Why not a nudity warning, then? Maybe nudity is OK but not in a scene with a man and a young girl. (The director was not Roman Polanski.)

As for time-traveling clothes, why did the Hulk always have pants on when he changed into the much larger green guy? Someday science will explain all that.

The Real Primrose Path

Herb H. wrote:

In Appalachia where I come from, the evening primrose blooms at twilight in one of the more remarkable displays on mother earth.  Here's a wonderful video in real time.

            Many a young lady, 'tis repeated in the folklore, has been taken by a man to see this wonder, a walk that leaves her out in the great outdoors with him as dark has fallen. She has been "led down the primrose path."  And as the scoundrel has many times not been persuaded to the rule of not-below-the-neckline, that term means led on a path to hell in rather a specific way — not at all the life of ease that leads to fire and brimstone in the end.

Well, it seems easy at first.

InfoCision

Harry H. commented on worst-stadium-name, Akron U.’s InfoCision:

I remembered reading a recent story in the Beacon about the big wind we had come through town a week or so ago. And the paper showed a picture of part of the 'InfoCision Stadium' signage that had blown down. That, and an article by Beacon writer Bob Dyer, made me think it said only the letters 'd', 'i', and 'u' had fallen (I might be mistaken). But it occurred to me that a good nickname for the team might be the "D,U,I's".

I don’t follow sports myself.

The Common Army

Someone I know with a military education (though not in the U.S.) said the reason England has the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and Royal Air Force, but not the Royal Army, is because the Army rose against the Crown some time in the 20th century. I’ve never heard of any such uprising. Wikipedia says, more believably, it’s because historically British Armies were composed of individually raised regiments and corps; “nevertheless, many of its constituent Regiments and Corps have been granted the Royal prefix and have members of the Royal Family occupying senior positions within some regiments.”

Right

Neil Cavuto talked about a “short-lived event” with “lived” rhyming with “strived” — the rarely heard correct pronunciation. The adjective “lived” comes from “life”, not from the verb “live”: something has a short life. He said it twice in one paragraph so it was not an accidentally correct pronunciation.

Wrong

Snatched from someone else’s messages: “You should be writing suspense scripts. I think my breath is actually baited.” If you know the difference between bated [abated] breath and baited breath, this comment will give you the amusing image of someone with a nightcrawler or a minnow in her mouth.

Two Wrongs

From an article on Bill Ayers: “In the 1990s, Ayers obtained Obama access to the deep pockets of Chicago foundations.” Should be “got Obama access”. Even though obtain and get are synonymous here, they are not grammatically equivalent and obtain doesn’t take an indirect object (“Obama”) unaided by a preposition (“for Obama”). I don’t know why.

It’s Not a Crime-Crime

More on the language of crime:

            Theodore Dalrymple wrote about “antisocial” vs. “hate crimes” in the UK: “the seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is.” For example, a murder is worse if the victim is gay or disabled, etc. Why?

            Bertha Lewis, the head of Acorn, said about the Acorn employees who gave helpful advice to a supposed pi mp and prostitute (“allegedly” according to CNN, which posted a video of them doing that very thing), “Acorn workers thought they were doing the right thing and were trying to be nonjudgmental.” Nonjudgmental, that is, about the idea of importing groups of extremely young girls into the country to work in a brothel. In what sense did they think they were doing the right thing?

            Kathleen Parker wrote that more than 100 Hollywood people signed a petition for  Roman Polanski’s release from his legal sentence. Parker said “we have reached the point, identified by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at which deviancy has been defined down to such an extent that we no longer recognize it.” Deviancy or deviance is a statistical term meaning variant on average behavior, though it has also come to mean psychological perversion. Who can be judgmental about mere deviancy? The term reeks of science, not of evil. Yet even Parker writes, “That so many have rallied to protect him, insisting that he has suffered enough, is evidence of a much stranger development in human history than that a man has seduced a child.” Seduced? Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl; this is not Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes for himself and Bette Davis. Polanski said he had a “penchant” for little girls, a simple matter of taste, like preferring mixed drinks to beer. You can hear a bit of his original statement in this amusing pastiche with an old Dragnet show.

            Is it art? “At London's Tate Modern art gallery, a spotlight shines on a blank space where a photograph of a nude Brooke Shields, aged 10, was supposed to hang. A sign warns: "This room contains images that some visitors may find challenging." … The photograph … shows the young Shields standing in a bathtub and wearing heavy makeup.”

            The choice of words is essential in making rape, murder, and pedophilia sound either intolerable or merely deviant.

Language-Change Index

From Garner's Usage Tip of the Day:

The most interesting new feature [of the third edition of Garner's Usage Tips of the Day, published by Oxford University Press in July] is the Language-Change Index. Its purpose is to measure how widely accepted various linguistic innovations have become. …

In these tips, the five stages are tagged as usages that are rejected (Stage 1), widely shunned (Stage 2), "widespread but . . ." (Stage 3), "ubiquitous but . . ." (Stage 4), or fully accepted (Stage 5). Here's a more thorough explanation:

Stage 1: A new form emerges as an innovation (or a dialectal form persists) among a small minority of the language community, perhaps displacing a traditional usage (e.g.: "notary publics" for "notaries public").

Stage 2: The form spreads to a significant fraction of the language community but remains unacceptable in standard usage (e.g.: "nuclear" mispronounced /NOO-kyuh-luhr/).

Stage 3: The form becomes commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage (e.g.: "octopi" used for "octopuses").

Stage 4: The form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts (die-hard snoots): (e.g.: "often" pronounced /OF-tuhn/).

Stage 5: The form is universally accepted (not counting pseudo-snoot eccentrics) (e.g.: "possum" for "opossum").

These stages may also be called:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

The Gritty Bits: My Week in Examiner.com

Obama's Week

Friday, October 9th, 2009

President Obama's week: Prez O went to Denmark with lovely wife Michelle and glamorous friend Oprah to persuade...

Redistribution of wealth = reparations?

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Barack Obama seems intent on breaking down the American economy and culture to refashion them in his own image....
Gun show attracts a cross-section of Americans

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Bill Goodman's Gun Show at Sharonville Convention Center attracts a cross-section of Americans totally alien to...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Phantonym

William Safire died on Sunday, September 27. He wrote for The New York Times for many years on politics and language. I’ve referred to his work from time to time, and just before he died I landed on a recent column called “Phantonym” which was his coinage for a word that appears to mean something other than it actually does, thus tripping up the innocent.

A common example is the confusion of uninterested with disinterested. Logically they could mean the same thing, but historically they don’t, and we need both meanings. Uninterested = not caring, having no curiosity or desire for something: “She is uninterested in reading that book.” Disinterested = impartial, gaining no personal benefit: “The judge is invested in the plaintiff company therefore he must recuse himself because he is not a disinterested party in the case.”

In 2005 Safire wrote a dozen rules for reading a political column, three of the main points being:

·         Beware when the writer uses a quote from the opposite political side to make a case.

·         Ignore insider jargon.

·         Consider the source, and whenever you see the word “respected” in front of a name, narrow your eyes.

These are legitimate rhetorical devices, but they are devices and as such should not distract you from the facts or the logic. From the truth, in other words.

Sorry to see Safire depart the scene.

The Not So Dark Ages

Maeve Maddox explains the Dark Ages in Daily Writing Tips:  First, we mustn’t confuse the Middle Ages with the period from about the fifth through tenth centuries, between the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the establishment of more stable European governments. Also, it’s a mistake to think that all learning and civilization were “dark” for centuries. A lot was going on then. Maddox says,

Historians don’t use the term “Dark Ages” anymore. It was a term invented by the Italian poet Petrarch in the 1330s to convey his feeling that the culture of ancient Greece and Rome had been superior to everything that succeeded it.

If historians aren’t using the term, we shouldn’t either, even if we’re not going to study history.

Flim Flam

John McC wants to know why flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. I found a little bit of useless history about the words online — words introduced into the language, words declining in use — but the important thing is that they both mean able to burst into flame. Since no one is likely to mistake the meaning of flammable, that’s what you usually see painted on the sides of containers carrying hazardous materials. Inflammable could be confused with non-flammable, which no one uses. It’s a safety issue.

The prefixes non and in can both mean “not” (though they can also mean nine and inside or into, respectively), so they’ve been used interchangeably at. But sometimes we end up with one or the other possible form, or in this case both, just because.

In other forms of the word, we find that an inflammation is not a fire but “the complex biological response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli”. Inflammatory words may incite to riot or at least to more inflammatory words. It seems that in no other formation does inflam- suggest “not firey” as inflammable seems to.

If flamenco dancing reminds us of flame

Would inflamenco dancing be tepid and tame?

Crimes by Any Other Name

The notorious Roman Polanski is back after fleeing 30 years ago to avoid major jail time for raping a 13-year-old girl. Some Hollywood types don’t think what he did was so bad. (You can look up the details for yourself). Harvey Weinstein referred to the “so-called” crime. It is not a “so-called crime”*, it was and is an actual crime. Weinstein apparently doesn’t want it to be a crime. Whoopi Goldberg said “it wasn’t ‘rape’ rape”, apparently because she doesn’t recognize statutory rape and/or Polanski’s variant on the physical crime.

Elsewhere on the legal front, Brian David Mitchell, the kidnapper of Elizabeth Smart, is the object of legal discussion about his “competency” to stand trial or be responsible for his actions. I never understood the rationale behind this defensive ploy. Mitchell was competent enough (1) to get what he wanted and (2) to try to evade capture. In a sense you could say that any violent, sadistic criminal is mentally unwell, but then what?

*When you add quotation marks to “so-called” does it mean “so-called so-called”?

Let’s Go to the Movies Safely

Movie ratings are getting more confusing. I don’t mean the PG, PG-13, R, but the growing list of qualifiers:

scary images

horror

some violence

violence

strong graphic violence

bloody violence

language

adult language

profanity (but not blasphemy)

brief drug use

drug use

partying

nudity

brief sexual content (!)

sensuality

mild sensuality

sexuality

sexual assault

mature themes (losing a job?)

brief disturbing images

But the one that puzzles me is for a PG movie (The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry) and a PG-13 movie (The Time Traveler’s Wife): “thematic elements”. I haven’t seen either one but they both seem to have carried over in theaters longer than some other movies, so they’re popular. If any of you have seen either movie, please share with us what “thematic elements” in them require cautions. Sperry seems to have a religious theme, specifically Christian, so perhaps that’s what the reviewer is warning potential viewers about. Time Traveler is sci fi so any religious stuff could be ascribed to fantasy.

The Stream of Literary Consciousness

I ran across a quotation from Samuel Johnson in Word Watch (Stephen Cox, Liberty Magazine, October 2009, pp. 10-11), which I recognized as the original of a paraphrase I remembered reading in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women:

Here’s Johnson on Lord Chesterfield’s too little-too late patronage (1755):

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it: till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Here’s Alcott, through the character of Jo March, on being a writing spinster (1868):

An old maid — that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps; when, like poor Johnson, I’m old and can’t enjoy it — solitary, and can’t share it, independent, and don’t need it.

This kind of literary borrowing is not plagiarism because Alcott the writer would assume her readers would be familiar with her own literary heroes, and would appreciate the allusion. And of course she mentioned his name. (By the way, some early feminist literary theorists thought that this style of sentence, the periodic sentence, might be an attribute of male writing, whereas a “female sentence” would just flow on. I don’t think so, even though Jo was a tomboy.)

Practically my only real contribution to scholarly publication was recognizing something that Jane Austen borrowed from Shakespeare when she described a character as “half mulatto, chilly and tender”. But it doesn’t mean what you might think, that the mulatto girl from the tropics was suffering in England’s climate. I happened to be taking a Shakespeare class that year and remembered this from All’s Well That Ends Well:

I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to enter. Some that humble themselves may; but the many will be too chill and tender, and they’ll be for the flow’ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire.

Thus a chill and tender character is one that treads the primrose path to hell. Austen would have assumed her readers knew Shakespeare.

My Week in Examiner.com

Moore explains where dictatorships come from

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

A review of Michael Moore's new movie Capitalism: A Love Story (rated R for strong language) by New York Times...

Health care reform is about corruption and control

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Although this aspect of the health care proposal is attached to Senator Max Baucus's name, it won't float without...

Mr. America is off to Denmark with Oprah

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Here he comes, Mr. America…! After winning the coveted Mr. America crown, the charming Barack Obama, who...

Divert health care resources

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

A TV pundit laments the lives lost annually because people couldn't get adequate medical care on time. These would...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

 We Keep On Trying

Karl Popper wrote, “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”

            Using three negatives as in that sentence is one way to be misunderstood, but it makes his point better than:

·         It is impossible to always be understood.

·         It is always possible to be misunderstood.

·         You cannot always be understood.

Here are more everyday examples of the possibilities of misunderstanding:

1. Listen to “Pancho and Lefty” by Townes Van Zandt; also performed by Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, with lyrics on this web site. I also like the video with Willie and Merle Haggard. Listen, read, watch, and see what you think of these two interpretations on the Van Zandt link (note that the first two lines should read “Living on the road my friend / Was gonna keep you free and clean” instead of “Is gonna keep you free and clean”):

In this beautifully written and subtly intertwined narrative, Lefty sells out Pancho to the Federales to get the money to go back to Cleveland. "He only did what had to do." The Federales lie about the old days, Pancho is dead, and Lefty wastes away: "The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold." The brilliance is that the three sides never meet; their interaction is entirely inferred.

Pancho was a bandit that got killed. His brother, Lefty avenged his brother's death and now he is spending the rest of his days runnning from the law.

The first comment is better written, spelled, and punctuated, showing that the writer reads more and may be a better literary interpreter. However, I don’t know what he means by the three sides never meeting since the Federales definitely met with somebody. On the other hand, there’s evidence in the lyrics that Lefty sold out Pancho and is remorseful in Cleveland.

2. John McC, a mathematician, wrote vis a vis my question about the necessity of the ebola virus:

I believe the Ebola virus, and all viri, are not considered to be "living" and thus not a species, they are pieces of genetic material, which can replicate parasitically.  The human Ebola virus is more like humans than it is like other viri.

I guess this means we need to define “living”. You go first. Anyway, does the Ebola become human-like when it eats us or do we become Ebolic? Do we become like cows when we eat a steak?

            On my speculating on the necessity of good, bad, and ugly viruses in general, Mike Sykes wrote:

I've always felt that way about the lesser spotted owl or the greater crested newt. But I'm sure you've realised you've raised a number of not necessarily related questions. I seem to remember that the case for keeping the smallpox virus is based on its potential usefulness in developing vaccines for viruses yet to appear. Of course, nations have developed (illegal) chemical weapons in case they need them for retaliation — this is a tricky area. Plant diversity is valued for the possible discovery of useful compounds such as taxol.

3. On the windmills, Dave DaBee wrote:

Windmills kill a lot of bats, too. It's the cause of a whole wind farm near the Cape being blocked for years.

I’d always thought it was the NIMBY factor (not in my backyard). Fred works in a huge glass building that kills birds. They think they’re flying into more sky, then they smack against the glass. Should we accept windmills as we do glass buildings and roadkill? Maybe, if windmills were more efficient.

4. Herb H. isn’t giving up on “necker knob”:

The term "bluenose" applied not to just anyone who used the term, but those who gave the spinner the name "necker knob" out of choice ("spinner" is a LOT easier to say) as a pejorative against anyone who might drive with one arm around his girl. Even in the 1950s, "necker knob" was a bizarre term and "necking" a fairly bizarre word — I for one never understood what the neck had to do with anything. 

            I rather expected the term "bluenose" to be recognized as one used a lot by H. L. Mencken.  Who, I believe, used a definition of someone haunted by the pervasive fear that somehow somewhere someone might be having fun.

Of course we have or used to have “blue laws” such as those that prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays. “Bluestockings” were educated women who accused of wearing ugly blue wool stockings instead of black silk. Risque comedians use “blue material”.

            Anyway, even though I knew not of necker knobs, I did know of necking, which wasn’t bizarre where I lived. It meant making out above the neck, the carnal Mason-Dixon line. As Jesse Winchester wrote, “Me, I want to live with my feet in Dixie / And my head in the cool blue North.” (Does “making out” need to be explained?) Fred noted that alliteration was part of the charm of “necker knob” even though “spinner” is one syllable shorter.

5. On NPR, someone said that people on the right have been trying to present the recently late Ted Kennedy as “unappealing”. “Unappealing” is someone who doesn’t trim his nose hair. Leaving a woman to die demands a stronger word. Or have I misunderstood something again?

Trewly Pair

David Rogerson wrote from England that “trews is very much a Scottish word and means trouser (pants to you) made in Tartan” thus answering Anne DaBee’s query. She wrote, “After all, one MUST have an answer to the perennial question "What do they wear under the kilts?"

            And Dave DaBee wrote, “My impression is that ‘pants’ in England (to this day) refers to undies. The Brits I know talk about trousers.”

            Mike Sykes from England once more helpfully sent these two Oxford English Dictionary entries and confirmed Dave on pants/trousers:

OED: I heard an American student at Cambridge University telling some English friends how he climbed over a locked gate…and tore his pants, and one of them asked in confusion, ‘But how could you tear your pants without tearing your trousers?'

And:

OED: 1996 Woman's Day (Sydney) 10 June 37/2 (caption) This ever-popular boot style works very well under long-line skirts, boot-legged jeans and pants.

Mike then remarked:

I know what boot-legged means (nothing to do with illicit liquo(u)r), but there's evidently a distinction between jeans and pants that eludes me.

Jeans are pants but pants aren’t always jeans. Jeans are denim pants. Blue jeans. And when I wrote “Once more into the breach” about britches, Mike said “Surely you jest!” Well, yeah. But don’t call me Shirley.

New-Fire Words

Rich Lederer sent “A Man of New-Fire Words” from his book The Miracle of Language, about Shakespeare’s words. (It’s too long to include here but you should be able to find it in Google Books. Better yet, buy the entire book.) Lederer wrote, “Of the 20,138 basewords that Shakespeare employs in his plays, sonnets, and other poems, his is the first known use of over 1,700 of them.” Lederer also said that in some cases these words were first seen in print in Shakespeare’s work, but he did use an enormous vocabulary and was endlessly inventive.

            In class today I explained to a student that although he constructed a word correctly — “I was cutting the bread uncarefully” — for whatever reason, the word we actually have is “carelessly”. So many possible English constructions haven’t stuck for some reason. But Shakespeare’s coinages often so precisely express an idea that they’ve lasted for centuries. However, what is brilliant in Shakespeare can become trite in the wrong hands.

            “That love affair was the be-all and end-all for the once stony-hearted girl who was no longer fancy-free; though her towering passion made her a laughing-stock, she was tongue-tied yet hot-blooded and green-eyed with jealousy. It was a foregone conclusion that she would go off half-cocked someday.” — If you’ve read this more in sorrow than in anger, you know Shakespeare.

            That stack of familiar phrases assembled from Rich Lederer’s article looks like a writing handbook for a bad romance novel.

My Examiner.com This Week

Clarification: I’ve been writing for Examiner.com for a few weeks. This is where I’m putting most of my political commentary, which should reduce the PO irritation factor.

Shrink bills to match Congressmen's capacity to read them

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

The health care bill and protests thereto have pushed off the front pages the nationalization of large auto...

The politics of church reform

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Sister Louise Akers and volunteer religion teacher Carol Egner have been prohibited from teaching in Cincinnati...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

David Rogerson reminded me from England that Shakespeare coined many words in common use today, including leapfrog and salad. “Salad” has an older Latin/Italian origin so my guess is that Shakespeare Anglicized it. I’d have to check the Oxford English Dictionary to delve any further.

David also introduced his note by saying “I expect I am telling my granny to suck eggs.” I was rather taken aback as this is not a phrase I’m familiar with. I know “egg-sucking dog” and was prepared to take offense but I realized: 1. a granny is not a dog; 2. I’m not old enough to be David’s granny; 3. there’s probably a difference between the egg-sucking of grannies and dogs.

Telling granny to suck eggs means telling telling somebody something she already knows very well, like a child would explain to granny how to poke holes in a raw egg to suck it. Since I never did that and would have found raw eggs revolting, the meaning wasn’t intuitive to me. (Although I did learn how to poke holes in eggs to blow the egg out, so you could decorate the empty egg for Easter.) An egg-sucking dog sneaks around in the hen house, though why and how a dog would suck eggs instead of crunching the shell, I don’t know. An egg-sucking dog is a dog you would chase with a shotgun. Granny is allowed to suck eggs.

Pants and Slacks

In the old Tracey and Hepburn movie, Pat and Mike, Hepburn’s annoying fiancé tells her to change from her pants into a skirt. She says, “These aren’t pants, these are slacks.” I don’t have a sense of distinction between the two as clothing, only as words. Slacks sounds a bit more formal only because it’s used less often. Slacks can be any pants, even if not part of a suit, ergo, more casual. You would expect the legs to be relatively loose fitting. From and for slackers?

Pants: from French PantalonPantalone, name of a character in Italian comedy, from the Venetian patron saint Pantalone or Pantaleone (pantos, panto- + leon, lion): also, the garment worn by this character. Pants are tight in the legs.

Trousers: from obsolete trousetriubhas, trews. I’ve read “trews” somewhere but don’t know if was used as an intentional archaism, or if I read it in an old piece of literature.

Britches obviously comes from breeches, as in “Once more into the…!”

Word of the Weak

The 9/14/90 issue of Newsweek headlines the story “Is Your Baby Racist?” with a cover photo of a white baby though theoretically the racism research extended to selected humans divided by two racial classifications. I didn’t think the story would be edifying and read only the callouts, which give a pretty good idea of the gist of the article:

“Kids as young as six months judge others based on skin color.”

Infants as young as six months can also usually tell the difference between their mother and their father, and between familiar faces and strangers. What if a white baby has a black nanny, huh?

“Children will see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and blue.”

Be glad your child isn’t color blind or just plain blind.

“Minority children who are told repeatedly of discrimination are less likely to see a connection between hard work and success.”

Well, duh.

“Black children who hear messages of ethnic pride are more engaged in school and more likely to attribute their successes to effort and ability.”

But don’t tell white children about ethnic pride.

I still haven’t read the whole article but, only a review so far. The authors and editors interpret the rather lame research to be about innate racism, when it’s really about the ability of infants and children to make visual distinctions. Some of the study was of infants, but some was of children old enough to have been exposed to lots of TV as well as people. No comparison.

I guess it’s true that racism has to be taught, and Newsweek is doing its bit to teach it.

Second Weak Word

Green has turned quickly into a marketing label, as you may have noticed. While conservation and care are valuable, let us think before diving into what might end up being a layer of green algae on a stagnant pool.

1. Windmills kill a lot of birds.

2. Those energy-saving fluorescent curly light bulbs contain mercury and are more trouble to dispose of safely than a lot of people are probably going to bother with.

3. Humans are pretty inventive but we are not able to create the number, kind, and extremes of cycles that the earth and evolutionary species have already gone through.

4. Do we want to protect all species, such as the ebola virus, for instance? If everything that exists (depending on your druthers, everything created or spontaneously or accidentally existing) is necessary to the cycle of life, why have so many species disappeared without our help? The earth and the universe continued nicely without them. Now, do we need the ebola virus? Do we need the tiny fish that are being preserved at the expense of the California farmlands, which need irrigation? Why do some people want to preserve the tiny fish (which we don’t eat) but get rid of people?

5. A local building advertises “Green Space Available”. Maybe it means they’ve built in the latest energy-saving technology, which is good. But according to some builders, the greenest buildings are the old buildings still standing.

Weakness

And speaking of weak words, don’t forget, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

This and That

[+] Bill R. wrote:

Going along with the “necker knob” (which, in my small town, was not generally used by teenagers because it was considered an “old folks” apparatus) is a characterization that’s been obsolete since bucket seats came into widespread use: “DDH” or “d****d door hugger,” applied to a young lady whose affection for the passenger side door outweighed her affection for the driver.

[+] Ben W. used the phrase “Ye glads” instead of “Ye gods”. Cute.

[+] A TV show was advertised “When animals strike”. For some reason I first thought of animals organizing and going on strike, maybe from too much news and politics in my brain.

[+] Father Robert Barron on YouTube comments on the culture in the series World on Fire, and usually he’s thoughtful and interesting. But in his review of the new movie District 9 — I haven’t seen it but it’s an alien monster movie — Fr. Barron laments that the humans “dehumanize” the aliens by calling them “prawns”. In fact, they are NOT humans so they can’t be “dehumanized”. I gather that this is one of those stories that’s supposed to teach us that just because they don’t look like us, that’s no reason to etc. etc. etc. Like, put yourself in the place of aliens in the Alien movie series: of course you’d want to incorporate a human into your body for breeding or nutritional purposes or whatever you needed if you were one of them, just like we eat animals and innocent fruits and tubers and legumes. No difference between you and a bean sprout, except that the sprout is not a human.

[+] In the 1946 movie, Till the End of Time, San Diego is referred to as “Dago”. I rewound it and listened twice to make sure I hadn’t misheard it. I’ve never heard this anywhere else but it is analogous to “Frisco” for San Francisco. (The movie isn’t readily available but try to catch it on TV.) San Franciscans don’t like “Frisco” but it’s still around. I suppose “Dago” could have disappeared because it’s also an unfriendly slang word for Italian (or Spanish or Portuguese).

[+] Have fun with magazines by putting your photo on a cover at Fake Magazine Cover online.

[+] Town & Country magazine says a row of antique stores in Hudson, New York, “leads to a bucolic riverside promenade”. They didn’t have photos of the promenade but anything that close to 1. a body of water and 2. a row of antique stores probably isn’t terribly rural looking or suitable for pasturing sheep.

[+] On a TV text crawler: “Our dynamic do woe…”

[+] This summer I went with my brother to an Irish club, basically a private bar for the Irish and friends. The motto of their Celtic Guard Curling Club is “Trample the wounded, hurdle the dead.” I need to get the T-shirt. This would an extension of the Irish battle cry “Faugh an Ballagh” (among other spellings) meaning “clear the way”.

This Week in Examiner.com

Objection to Obama's policies is anti-white

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Ex-president Jimmy Carter said yesterday that he believes most of the protest against Obama's policies is really... Yale sells its freedom of speech

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Yale University, whose motto is Lux et Veritas (Light and Truth) has inflicted upon itself a disturbing piece of... New Hampshire forces child into public school

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

A New Hampshire court has ordered a home-schooled child to be sent to public school. Although the issue is merely...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

From Anne DaBee:

Okay — re necker's knobs", which is the name my 80-year-old remembery recalls: the knob was on the left for left-handed driving, leaving the right hand free for whatever it wanted to try to get away with, assuming a female passenger... That's MY story, and I'm sticking to it. And I don't believe I'm a "blue nose", thank you, and certainly not male. I also don't believe I told Dave a whatever-knob could get stuck in either his chest or his sleeve, but a desperate mother can say strange things, and sometimes fear is more effective than a thousand words of good advice.

I agree with Anne. Don’t know why Herb H. called people blue noses who used the term necker knobs. According to Fred, the people who used the term were usually jocks who used the knobs, but oddly enough, not the car guys, the street drag racers, car modifiers, and so on.

And from Bill R:

“Risking death to look cool is the ultimate in cool.”

Remember the fighter pilot’s credo: “I’d rather die than look bad.”

A variation on “Death before dishonor.”

Floy Floy Revisited

I could make an entire career writing about floy floy. Somewhere in the world right now, someone is thinking about floy floy and may find the Parvum Opus columns about it. Here’s the newest entry and a most interesting one, from new reader Ben W.

I read your post on the Slim Slam song, found it interesting, and wanted to add my two cents. I'm Black, adopted into a white family, enjoy House music, am familiar with elements of club culture, and grew up listening to 50's doo wop and rock and roll. [Note: Ben told me he’s 40 years old, when I asked, so he was listening to 50s music after the fact.]

Floogie: a male reference. The flat-foot reference seems to be male in this case. I'm sure a female could have been told she was flat-footed but she would have to be a very bad dancer perhaps with male-ish attributes. Generally flat-footed was a term used with males. Floogie could be good (hip or a hipster thus a play on words) or bad (a hip slacker or just a slacker).

Floy floy: a feminine reference. An easy person.

When I read the lyrics I see two hip or semi hip people out on the town. They are skating through life, living fast, and perhaps involved in an illegal activity.

I heard that Little Richard (LR) developed his version of Tutti Frutti from Slim & Slam and what piqued my interest was LR's reference to an*al sex in the original dittie. With that in mind I thought Slim & Slam may have been making similar innuendo in some of their songs. I think this is the wrong track, however; I think it is good to think of the two terms as masculine and feminine. Not that the actual genders match the roles. [*Asterisk inserted to evade filters. Not sure what the reference was in Tutti Frutti, though.]

I think the reference to "get those floy floys straight" is fascinating and potentially revealing. Set them straight as in straighten up and fly right, clean up your act, lead an upright life, or get your act together? I think this may be the case. If floy floy's are boys then would they need to be "straightened" out? I am not familiar with Black gay culture in the 1930's so I do not know if the term "straight" would be used.

Ben’s second note:

Black cultural aesthetics are so interesting: reinventing meaning — bad/good, defining and promoting one's own heroes, and defining positive and negative based on the subject's intent, not inherent value, among other things. After a closer reading I'm wondering if the lighthearted feel good song is an homage to jitterbuggers, floogies, and floy-floys. People (floogies and floy-floys) seen in a negative light who can actually help alleviate/take your troubles away? Sounds similar to the perception some people held of black folk in the 1930’s. A veiled allegory? A party song? Are Floogies and Floys-Floys heroes or anti-heroes? Did the jitterbuggers see themselves as floogies and floys-floys?

The last sentence “Well, all right then; get those floy-floys straight!” takes on interesting possible meanings given these questions.

Appreciating your floy-floy.

A lot to chew on here. Again, here’s a link to the song by Slim Gaillard. And another one, the complete recording by Slim and Slam. And here it is by The Mills Brothers and Louis Armstrong. It’s just too good.

Idiots Are the New Dummies (She Screamed)

Contribution from another new reader, Rebecca R.:

ripped from the headlines --- an Amazon book review i found…we've officially reached the end of culture. Welcome to the new depths of mediocrity:

2.0 out of 5 stars overly complicated
For a "Dummies" book, this was overly complicated and difficult to read. If you need clearer information, I would recommend the complete idiots guide. Published 3 months ago by C. Tuley

Bee & Flower

Perhaps you’ve used Bee & Flower soap from Shanghai, China. I first saw it when my brother brought a box home as a gift from Vietnam. It seemed wonderfully exotic then; I’ve since bought it in Chinese groceries here. Beautifully packaged in flowered paper with a pretty paper band around it and a gold seal, it has a charming promotional insert in four languages, Chinese, French, Spanish, and English. So often packaging material from abroad features some pretty entertaining English, but this is almost perfect, with only a couple of dubious constructions:

“Bee & Flower” Rose Soap

Another sparkling product of “Bee & Flower” brand

We now recommend you a new product of ROSE scented soap for your enjoyment. It is made of selected materials and natural ROSE essence, which gives you a delightful and lasting fragrance. Just give it a try and you’ll no doubt be convinced.

First, it should be “recommend to you”. Perhaps the writer confused the indirect with the direct object construction (“we recommend the soap”), or confused the verb with tell or sell (“we tell you about the soap”; “we sell you the soap”). I also thought you’d have to be convinced before you buy the product, but that’s just quibbling. You may have doubts, and still purchase.

The Sandalwood Bee & Flower soap description on Amazon.com tells us the manufacturer is Prince of Peace, and is even more seductive, in a refined way, with no discernable errors though again the convincing time line is a little confusing; that is, using the soap is convincing after you’ve bought it, but the promo must convince before purchasing, except that the printed material is sealed inside the wrapper:

Bee & Flower Sandalwood Soap gently and luxuriously cleanses the skin and has a pleasing sandalwood scent. It is so delightful to your skin! Our "Bee & Flower" Sandalwood Soap, made from selected materials, gives you delightful and lasting fragrance. It not only possesses all the merits a sandalwood scented soap may have, but also does no harm whatever to your skin. Just try it, and you will see our sincere recommendation is rather convincing.

Rather!

Los Angeles

Lately I’ve heard Los Angeles pronounced with a hard G in movies from the 1950s — Ang-el-es, which must have been in common use then and there, keeping in mind that those movies were made in Hollywood. Los Angeles grew from a small town founded in the 18th century and of course the Spanish pronunciation is An-hel-es. Since the ‘50s, pronunciation seems to have stabilized in the Anglicized version with the G sound of the City of Angels: An-jel-ez.

New on Examiner.com

Remember 9/11

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli created a monument to 9/11 called “To the Struggle Against World...

UK convicts 3 men of huge terrorist plot

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

In Great Britian Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar, and Tanvir Hussain have been convicted of plotting terrorist...

Release of Lockerbie bomber sets precedent for future deals

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

An arithmetic thought problem: If you divide 270 dead people into 900 million pounds, how many of the dead...

Truth smears Van Jones

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Green Czar Van Jones is gone, forced to resign by smears, he says. Actually he was forced to resign because of...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Hair o’ the Hare

I’m not going to look this up, but shouldn’t “hair brained plot” (which I read in a blog) be “hare brained plot”? That is, as stupid as something a rabbit would dream up. Of course you might argue that a hair is even less intelligent than a rabbit.

Hubbies

Ben and Jerry’s has changed the name of its “Chubby Hubby” ice cream to “Hubby Hubby” in honor of the same-sex marriage law in Vermont. It’s a temporary change, just for the month of September. I think they should have rolled out an entirely new flavor, because it sort of makes me think of someone’s hubby changing his sexual preference mid-scoop. Not a good idea.

Preacher Curl

We’ve joined a new gym with lots of new machines by several different manufacturers. One is a bicep curl called Preacher Curl. Fred has heard of that, I haven’t. Why would you call this machine or this exercise a preacher curl? There’s also a preacher bench for exercising. Was there a piece of furniture customarily assigned to the preacher? Fred thinks it’s an Americanism for the prie-dieu, a bench for kneeling and leaning, which the preacher bench resembles. But prie-dieu is so French and so Catholic, while preacher bench is such a Protestant term, and I don’t recall that type of furniture in a Protestant church.

Apologetics

If you’re not familiar with ecclesiastical terminology, the word apologetics may be misleading. We almost invariably use the word “apologetic” (without the S) to refer to a tone of apology, that is, expressing regret for something. So when we hear about church apologetics, it sounds like someone is apologizing for something wrong. Apologetics and related words all come from the Greek word meaning defense. Church apologetics are detailed and reasoned explanations of tenets of faith. Ordinarily I’m not in favor of abandoning words because they’re unfamiliar to the average listener or reader — get a dictionary, sez I — but this is a case where if I used the word in an ordinary classroom, I would immediately define it, or else use a different word.

            There are those who even think the subjunctive can be done away with, merely because so many people don’t get it. Daily Writing Tips thinks so, but if I were you I wouldn’t bite on that one yet. If you say “If I was you” you’re still going to sound sub-literate, at least for the time being. I did learn a new term from DWT, however: irrealis. This grammatical term refers to moods in English and other languages that refer to the unreal.

And Now for a Hymn

Most people know the old hymn “Amazing Grace” by reformed slave trader John Newton. You’ve heard it at church or at a funeral or on TV or from a bagpiper. Today, people sometimes change the second line of the first verse:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Now you might hear:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved and set me free.

John Newton knew he was a wretch. Wretch, by the way, descends from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning exile. I don’t know if it retained any of that sense in the 18th century when Newton wrote the song, though Newton must have felt exiled from God. Today it just means some who’s miserable or vile, and who probably has poor self-esteem. Here’s my suggestion for another variation:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

That saved my self esteem.

I stumbled across an interesting version of the song by The Dropkick Murphys, a Boston punk band, which keeps the word “wretch” but is interspersed with (it’s hard to make it out) their own song, “Good Rats”, about “a little lad named vermin McCann / who fell upon a drink that made him feel like quite a man”. The good rats eventually sink in the beer. Funny guys, those Murphys. They know a false paradise when they taste it.

Shine On

Anne DaBee suspected I might have meant “eke out your pension with a little moonlighting on the side” instead of “eke out your pension with a little moonshining on the side.” No, I meant moonshining. She went on:

Sounds good to me, and might be more profitable (and ultimately more fun) than the more usual "moonlighting". But then there's the nuisance of making a still, and what I've been told is the highly unpleasant smell of the actual distilling.  Guess I'll stick with the moonlighting.

It is a nuisance, and vermin will fall into the still. Literally. My dad told the story of going to buy moonshine in the hills of West Virginia when he was a lad, but he changed his mind when he spotted rats floating in the ‘shine.

            Anne also recounted another restaurant scam which was much like the scene in the movie Victor, Victoria, but she said “this was the brainchild of a TEACHER — who thought he was terribly clever, and saw nothing wrong with what he'd done. Glad none of MY kids were in his class, and God help those who were.” Now you know better than to mention God within 100 feet of a school.

            Anne concluded, “glad you're better — and healing or heeling or whatever.” Those DaBees are irrepressible.

Inspiration

President Obama is planning to speak to school children and there’s been some grumbling that the federal government is interfering with curriculum, which is outside its scope. There’s nothing wrong with a president speaking to students. My objection might be to some of the questions, such as, How does President Obama inspire you? Things like that. Too much like a cult of personality. Schoolchildren should be studying the principles on which the country was founded, not the inspirational personality of a politician.

Spinner, Necker, Suicide, Brodie . . .

Herb H. wrote at technical length about the famous knob:

            I wanted to mention that another name for the steering wheel spinner was Brodie knob.  I capitalize Brodie because I always assumed it was originally someone's proper name.  One definition for "brodie" was half a donut.  It was the act of turning a very tight turn, portion of a circle, under maximum power so that the rear (driving) wheels were on the verge of breaking loose or actually did break loose and spin — which resulted in sideways skid of the rear wheels and an even tighter turn.  I've heard it described as "laying down a brodie," though in my memory it was almost always said to "cut a brodie" or "cut a few brodies."  If a brodie continued its tight turn through a circle, that was a "donut," cutting a donut. Reversing direction after each half circle would continue travel in one general direction, cutting a string of brodies. I didn't drive to school, but often rode to lunch with others … who embraced the practice of cutting a few final brodies on entering the school parking lot when returning from lunch. It was terrific for blowing off a little steam before going back into school for the afternoon.  And it looked so cool that a bunch of other kids started imitating it as they in turn came across the school parking lot.

            Okay, the knobs.  I agree they were often called "necker knobs," primarily by old blue noses (of any age, mostly male).  Reports of their being outlawed I believe are greatly exaggerated.  The knobs remained useful on industrial (fork lift) trucks for many years. On cars, not so much.  American cars in the 1940s and early 50s had big heavy engines and transmissions weighing down on the front wheels. Before power steering, they required far greater mechanical advantage just to be able to turn the steering wheel at low speed. It took a lot of turns of the steering wheel to move the front wheels from left lock to right lock or right to left.  Car magazines used to report on steering responsiveness by giving the number of "turns lock to lock" in the report of a car test drive. Three turns lock to lock was about as fast as one could hope for out of Detroit, while 4 and a half turns lock to lock meant you had to do a lot of cranking of that wheel.  Barry S. once said that you turn the wheel and the matter gets referred to a subcommittee.

            Actual use as a "necker knob" probably gave rise to some problems that supported the blue noses in their castigation of "suicide knobs." Well, there were other reasons too for left-hand placement of the knob. For gooder or worser purposes, placing the knob for use in the left hand had some drawbacks.  Many right-handed drivers didn't have either the strength or the control in the left arm and hand to turn over the (manual) steering job to that member.  Vigorous driving often called for precise steering. Over-doing it with the left hand trying to control through that knob might result in a turnover (of a truck, probably not a car). If a front wheel in the process of cornering hit an unyielding obstacle — or perhaps went into a hole in the pavement — it COULD happen that the steering wheel would be knocked backward very forcefully. Again, more risk in a truck than a car. In that event a bare steering wheel would be hard to hold onto. A knob on the wheel could and reportedly did break the hand (thumb) that was hammered by the knob. Wherever that right hand was, it was needed very quickly in such a circumstance and possibly not available.

            That kick-back of the steering wheel was more of a problem with a rack and pinion steering gear than with the worm and roller gear that was much more common on the big American cars of the day.  I think it was also more of a problem in trucks because their steering wheels often operated in a more horizontal plane and they featured much bigger wheels on the pavement.

Herb recommended I buy one. It would look cool in my aging PT Cruiser… But Dave DaBee wrote:

Huh, I was told (lord knows by whom, long ago) that "suicide knob" was because in a crash it could puncture your chest. Your explanation makes more sense. AntiqueWish refers to "the unfortunate result of getting the knob stuck in your sleeve." 

Risking death to look cool is the ultimate in cool.

Examiner.com

This week on Examiner.com:

National deficit is too big for your calculator

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Entrepreneur Matt Miles has built a new calculator big enough to display the new national deficit, which doesn't...
The dogs that didn't bark

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Once again the National Organization for Women has made a dubious political bargain by lauding Ted Kennedy after...
Chappaquiddick is old news

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

Senator Edward Kennedy is being mourned as a great statesman, as a hero of the common people, as a Kennedy, though...
Deficit is not created by intelligent design

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

There's an old story about a professor who gave a lecture saying that the sun would burn out in a billion years,...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Watch Those Acronyms

Our little surburban town is offering training for volunteers to assist in case of an outbreak of epidemic. These volunteers are called Point of Dispensing Core Volunteers. In other words, POD people. I won’t be volunteering.

            Who gets the job of naming? Is that a political patronage job for one’s political enemies?

Foreign Accent Syndrome

Interesting story about a radio announcer who had a stroke, lost her voice, and resumed speaking with what sounds like some sort of British accent. I don’t think the narrator should have said she was “afflicted” with an English accent but her friends did tend to think she was faking it. Some of my adult ESL students must feel they are afflicted with English, and that if they develop a convincing American accent, they are being unfaithful to themselves.

            The switch in accent makes sense when you consider that sounds are produced by the shapes our tongues and lips make, and if brain or nerve damage changes one’s control over the mouth, the sounds naturally might be different.

            I had some sort of tiny episode about ten years ago that left me unable to speak quite as quickly as I used to, but I only noticed it had happened when I couldn’t say one particular phrase as quickly as before: “That’s a good idea.” I stumbled before the word “good”. I must have used that phrase quite a bit. Better than saying “That’s a bad idea.” My speed has improved somewhat over the years.

Worst Stadium Name

I thought Quicken Loans Arena (Cleveland) was the worst new stadium I’d ever heard of until I heard the corporate name of the new stadium at my alma mater, The University of Akron: InfoCision Stadium. Akron U., which is in the center of town, was due a new stadium. For decades they’d used the Rubber Bowl, which was a few miles out on the outskirts of town, next to Soap Box Derby Downs. Akron thrived for a long time as Rubber City when the big rubber companies set up shop there. The Rubber Bowl sounded good and paid homage to a whole industry and region. But InfoCision? What is it and how long will it last?

            Akron’s school team is the Zips and the mascot is Zippy the Kangaroo. Someone has suggested “The Pouch” as a nickname for the new stadium. Beats InfoCision, which sounds like a surgical procedure.

            Speaking of my alma mater, as fond as I am of Akron U., I can’t think of it as my soul mother. Maybe my soul aunt: alma amita?

Spinner, Necker, Suicide

After I broke my right arm in July, it took longer than it might have to resume driving because I have a stick shift, so I thought it might be helpful and fun to put a knob on my steering wheel to allow me to turn it more easily with just my left hand. And it would look cool. I’m driving that stick shift now with approximately 1-1/2 hands.

            Fred said when he was a teen they called the steering wheel attachment a “necker knob”. You could use one hand to steer and one hand to hold your honey. (Do kids still use the term “neck” or “necking” to refer to whatever, or do they just go immediately from physical proximity to intercourse with no stops along the way?)

            Anyway, Fred had a job done on his truck and when he asked the man at the auto shop about necker knobs, the guy said they called them “suicide knobs” because they can break off when you’re driving. So I didn’t get one. (Actual name: spinner knobs.)

A Little Proofreading

I’m reading Lie Down With the Devil by Linda Barnes, whose mysteries I enjoy because they’re set in and around Boston, and she writes a good story. But she could use a bit of editorial help.

            For instance here: “I sat in the car, the feeble heater eking out a stream of warm air…” Eke is an old Anglo-Saxon word that is used wrongly most of the time. People have heard the old expression “to eke out a living” which they understand means to make a paltry living. What it means literally is to add to a small living with something else. You can, for instance, eke out your pension with a little moonshining on the side. People seem to have the idea that it means squeeze out a living or produce something with difficulty, but eke is really like add or augment. When I read “eking out a stream of warm air” I pictured the heater adding a bit of warmth to some other heat source, but that didn’t make sense. It made more sense to think that Barnes misused the word the way so many others do, professional writer though she is.

            Barnes also wrote that someone had a “rose-shaped tattoo”. Shaped is extraneous and in fact misleading. A rose-colored tattoo would be pinkish but might not really be a picture of a rose. Something could be shaped like a rose yet be intended for something else, like a fluffy pink cloud (in the case of a sloppy tattoo artist). You might as well say an anchor-shaped tattoo, a cross-shaped tattoo, a tiger-shaped tattoo, or a hula-girl shaped tattoo.

Creative Nonfiction

I know a grad student who’s taking a class in Creative Nonfiction. I jokingly asked (on Facebook) if that meant lying. She said “hahaha...no, not really...falsification is certainly frowned upon, though truth will more than likely be revealed as subjective...”

            To which I added, “Oh, that kind of ‘truth’. There's yours, mine, ours, theirs, and some in unclaimed freight.”

            I never took writing classes in college, neither fiction nor nonfiction and certainly not creative. Not even journalism. It must be since I graduated that truth began to be subjective, and no one sent me the memo. Nevertheless, so often I’ve noticed that when I voice or write an unpopular opinion, there is no cheerful chorus approving “my” truth.

Alinsky

Bob O. wondered if I was reading Saul Alinsky just to put Obama in a bad light. I’m reading Alinsky to understand the source material first hand, and fortunately the books are very short. From all I’ve read, Obama was much influenced by Alinsky, and it’s up to the reader — up to you  — to decide if this is good or bad. Last week I mentioned the restaurant scam anecdote last week. I don’t fault a person for stealing if he’s starving, and the Depression was a tough time. But people handled it in very different ways.

            Now I’ve bought Rules for Radicals, originally published in 1971; my edition is copyright 1989. The dedication to Lucifer remains in this edition. Whether or not you think this reflects poorly on Obama perhaps depends on how you think about Lucifer, the most beautiful of the angels. Or maybe this is a part that O skipped, like some details he missed in 20 years of Jeremiah Wright sermons.

            I’m still reading the prologue. He refers to the revolutions in Russia and China as the “panaceas of the past”. Depends on who you talk to. Any kulaks remaining to ask about the Russian panacea? Alinsky writes that “all values and factors are relative, fluid, and changing” (that truth thing again) so the kulaks’ truth will be different from his.

My Week on Examiner.com

CIA may undergo further investigation

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Will Obama once again stop his people from investigating CIA interrogation techniques,

The resume of a czar

Monday, August 24th, 2009

The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power...
Fear of death not a NOW story

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Fathima Rifqa Bary is a 17-year-old girl who ran away to Florida from Ohio because she converted from Islam to...
Mass murderer goes home a hero

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Who is surprised that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was received as a hero in Libya after ...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

|||  Penquin Cleaners: In case you’re reading fast, the sign has a Q instead of a G in penguin. There’s a picture of a penguin with a top hat and cane, so the bird is not in question. Was the spelling intentional? Probably not. Incidentally, when I searched “penquin” on the Web, I found someone’s comment on the gay penguins in a German zoo, asking, “Are we not as smart as a penquin?” Well, we can almost spell as well as they would if they could (or could if they would). Since you can find all kinds of behavior in the animal world, from adorable to zoologically unspeakable, comparing human behavior to penquins, penguins, black widow spiders, seahorses, or lions is a bad practice.

|||  Hair Weeving: Also an unintentional spelling, that is, it’s not designed to attract attention, and it calls to mind weevils.

|||  Bean Counters: An aide in a Congressional representative’s office was much impressed with the Congresswoman’s wit when she used the phrase “bean counter”. The young (let me stress young) fellow didn’t know it was a very old phrase, no doubt going back to the time of the pharaohs if not earlier. They’ve found hieroglyphics meaning “accountant” that resemble this: o+o+o+o.  Well, I too run across words I’ve never heard before. Sometimes they’re brand new and sometimes they’re very old.

|||  Repurpose a Chair: In a newspaper article on house decorating in what’s left of the newspaper, the writer said a woman who bought a new house “repurposed” a chair from her old house by … moving it to the new house. Even if she’d reupholstered it, it would still have the same purpose.

|||  Corner of Park and Don’t Park: The city painted PARK in big letters on a street that you can’t park on. In all fairness, I have to say that it was painted right next to a park entrance.

|||  Advertising a radio trivia show: “We ask queries.” You can’t say that. You can say “We ask questions” but even though queries means the same as questions, you just can’t say that. You can say “We answer queries” though. It just is that way.

|||  Cheese ad:

Under the skilled hands of Master Cheesemakers in Wisconsin, fresh pasteurized cow's milk is stirred, drained, salted and drained again before being pressed into forms, cut and then OVEN BAKED until the outside is toasted to a golden brown.  Yes, this cheese is BAKED ...  but because of the freshness of the milk and the nature of natural proteins, it retains a supple texture that is remarkable — really, once it squeaks against your teeth, you can't resist remarking on it. You'll see ...  AND THE FLAVOR — it expresses a mellow toastiness with a buttery subtlety that's purported to make the world's strongest wrestlers fall to the floor for nary a nibble.

If only I could channel S. J. Perelman to really do something with this ad. Anyway, I’ve included most of the ad because of the lush, almost cheesy writing, but the highlight is “nary a nibble”. What might happen to the world’s strongest wrestlers if at least one nibble were forthcoming? Have today’s young copywriters lost the understanding of “nary”?

I heard a modifier dangling on State Street yesterday

Overheard in New York:

Woman #1: Kate and I saw a snake walking down State Street yesterday!

Man: What?

Woman #2: Wait... walking?

--Central Park

Getting Caught Is a Crime

One of those Facebook polls:

Do you believe that getting caught dog fighting should be a felony?

For those of you who don’t follow American sports criminals, this question is about football player Michael Vick, who was arrested and imprisoned for being vicious with dogs. He’s back in football now, has a good job making big bucks, and presumably is really sorry that he got caught.

            The poll question might have been written by him or someone else into dog fighting. If getting caught were a felony, would the catcher or the caught be at fault? Perhaps the felon would still be at fault since he was stupid enough to get caught.

            The form of the question, of course, reveals the mind set of someone who evaluates crime or morality in terms of getting caught or not, rather than in terms of what is intrinsically right or wrong, even if said writer didn’t understand his own sentence.

TMI Yet?

The nonprofit Internet Archive is building a free digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. So far they’ve archived about half of all Yiddish texts plus moving images, software, and much more.

            I wonder if this archive is holding all the files or just links to the files. Since web sites disappear, it’s useless unless the actual files are saved. Which means when it’s fully archived, the Web will more than double in size and keep increasing.

Not TMI Over There

AP Reports further tightening of controls on Web access in China, while on the other hand a TV station in California supported by a large population of Iranian immigrants distributed thousands of camera pens with flash drives in Iran.

Required Reading

I’ve been reading a bit of Saul Alinsky, who was a big influence on community organizer Barack Obama’s thinking. (Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis at Wellesley about Alinsky.) Can’t find much in the library here but I’ve got The Professional Radical, Conversations with Saul Alinsky by Marion K. Sanders. It’s a short book and I’ve only read a few pages so far. Alinsky graduated — “c um laude I guess” he wrote modestly — in 1930 with a degree in archaeology and quite naturally had trouble making a living in that field during the Depression, but he figured out how to pull a scam on chain restaurants to eat practically for free. His first “stirrings of social conscience” led him to organize meetings to teach other kids to do the same thing, and all went swimmingly until the restaurants figured it out. Note that his stirrings of social conscience did not extend to the restaurant owners. Then his acolytes kept after him to tell them what to do next. He found that they resented him when he didn’t have anything else to tell them, and wrote: “There’s an old saying about favors extended becoming defined as rights. I found out it’s true.” This did not turn him away from scamming. He was just getting his feet wet.

            I may have to actually purchase "Rules for Radicals" as the library doesn’t have it, though online I find that the means justifies the ends is a big part of his thinking. I’ve read that it’s got a smokin’ dedication, or at least had this one in an early edition:

From all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.

Examiner

Latest Examiner.com items:

News stories go in pairs

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Like shoes, news stories should always travel in pairs, one right and one left....

Report kidnapping by domestic airlines

Friday, August 14th, 2009

When I first heard a story about airplane passengers being trapped on a grounded plane for hours with no food or toilets, I thought it was a fluke. …

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

>>>  Quite some time ago I mentioned the original meaning of “cute” as something like clever, derived from “acute”. The word was still in transition in 1937, as I discovered in my weeks-long movie marathon while waiting for my arm to heal. In Marked Woman, with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis, one thug asks another about some criminal plan: “Is it cute?” “Everything I do is cute.” They were serious and they weren’t asking if they were adorable.

>>>  A more modern bit of criminal jargon is “lick”, heard on the crime series 48 Hours. A criminal in Dallas said, “We went in for a lick”, meaning to rob the place.

>>>  On LA Ink (about a tattoo parlor): “It ain’t rocket surgery.”

>>>  In a new British production of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mystery, Murder Is Easy, someone says, “He was mentally deficient, or to put it more kindly, a simpleton.” The book was first published in 1939, and assuming the movie kept the original dialogue, we have here an interesting example of changes in euphemistic fashion. Why was “simpleton” a kinder term than the slightly clinical sounding “mentally deficient”? Nowadays it doesn’t sound so genteelly neutral. Perhaps any synonym that has been used as an insult goes out of favor: You simpleton! Idiot! Moron! Fool! Retard! The currently acceptable pseudo-scientific term (unless I’ve missed something newer) is “developmentally disabled”. The terms for everyday use in referring to someone who is unfortunately congenitally and constantly, uh, slow get more and more bulky.

Romeo and Juliet in the Park

For years I’ve caught Shakespeare in parks when I can, starting in Boston and now around Cincinnati. Even the most amateur productions have some merit, and I’m always impressed with the effectiveness of very simple sets. Last weekend we saw Romeo and Juliet, not my favorite but of course always engaging.

            This production was rather odd since Romeo was not the most romantic looking boy on stage or even in the park, and further because Romeo and Juliet both were played for comedy in the first half. They played high-strung teens totally lacking in romance, at least to my ears. The transition from farcical “love” to tragic death was clumsy.

            The set consisted of walls covered with small posters for the Capulets and the Montagues. The Capulet posters were red, vaguely Communist looking with three upthrust arms holding AK-47s in the air with flowers stuck in the barrels. The Montague posters were black with bastardized versions of the American eagle and anti-American slogans about greed, etc. Shakespeare made it clear that the two feuding families were “alike in dignity”, not divided by ideological differences, so when I saw the posters I started to wonder if someone was going to rewrite the dialogue, but fortunately not.

O Say Can You See The Great Gatsby

Did you know the F in F. Scott Fitzgerald was Francis? What’s more, did you know his full name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald? Yes, the writer of the American anthem.

De Gustibus

Regarding my complaint about argument, Mike Sykes wrote:

De gustibus non disputandum. Of course, if you actually enjoy an argument, ...
I seem to remember a quote from GKC: I hate a quarrel because it interrupts an argument.

I keep trying to stick to argument but I keep getting slapped with abuse from odd quarters, a la the Monty Python’s Argument Clinic.

            Much of PO concerns rhetoric, which today is often mistakenly taken to mean false or misleading argument. Actually it just means the techniques of speech and writing that we use to help convey our point or convince others. These are not automatically dishonest.

            One rhetorical device I use when discussing anything controversial (political) is to be careful which links I use to report a source. Many readers will accept anything printed in the New York Times but will reject the same information from Fox News (although they don’t always report the same stories; there are holes in the news). So I try to use the most popular or apparently neutral source for a story.

            For instance, in “Smelt survive farmers” below, I found a link to the story on www.gaypatriot.news. “Patriot” is a positive conservative word, not that liberals aren’t patriotic but let’s get real; gay is a positive buzz word for liberals as well as many others. I want to filter out or balance as many buzz words or memes as possible so we can think about the smelt. As long as the facts are correct, this technique is honest.

            When you only speak to people who agree with you about everything, it’s not necessary to be careful. In the past, my opinions were usually the popular ones. Now they’re not (the world changed and some of my opinions changed), and I don’t assume I’m writing to or speaking to people who agree with me on everything or who have walked in my steps, so PO has been an exercise in developing rhetorical technique. I seem to have started in training as a young girl in arguments with my parents. Logic didn’t work them, at least what logic I was able to muster. And if I thought I was logical in the past and I think that I’m logical now, when my life and ideas are quite different, where does that leave logic? I don’t know how often people are swayed by logic, or even facts.

            Rhetoric involves logic, appeals to the emotion, and appeals to authority (such as the selected Web links), none of which might work when self-interest or ego are involved.

            Personally attacking people who disagree with you (or me), i.e. calling names, may be honest, but it’s not sound argument and I usually draw the line there.

            I’ve been reading about the Rules for Radicals propounded by Saul Alinsky, who was a great influence on both Obama and Hillary Clinton. He dedicated RforR to Lucifer, the “first radical”. His “community organizing” rules were really rules for people outside a community to use the community to take power. He was all about the ends justifying the means, and the ends were power, not truth. One technique is ridiculing your opponents and their ideas, precluding discussion.

            There’s no need to discuss anything you don’t care to, but often people are not playing by the same rules. So we need to learn the various rules.

Examiner.com

Here are my new Examiner.com posts (if links don’t work go to http://bit.ly/12LU6s).

Redistribution of green in Sahara Desert

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

According to National Geographic News, the Sahara is turning green in places — due to global warming. Or...
Obama offers Post Office as loser business model

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Obama does seem to be getting more open or transparent, as he promised. On a clear day you can see right through...
Smelt survive farmers

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

What’s a recession without a dust bowl? Some California farmers are posting signs in their parched fields and...
U.S. birth rate declines for the first year in decade

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The Associated Press reports that the U.S. birth rate fell in 2008, the first annual decline for a decade. Experts...
White House scans Web

Monday, August 10th, 2009

The White House seems to be using sophisticated web scanning programs to search for and pick up selected...

Rule

The spider must be killed today

But the web of yesteryear can stay.

~ by Fred

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Back in the Saddle

I’m back and I can type though I can’t lift my right arm. Too much pain, not enough strength, but it gets better every day. Thanks very much to all of you who sent your good wishes. They really do help, even with a relatively minor, though disabling, injury. I say “minor” because now everywhere I go I see the lame, halt, and blind. (Lame and halt are really the same, aren’t they? Maybe we should make that cliché more efficient by changing it to lame, blind, and rashy, or something.)

            I’m now writing items for Examiner.com (Cincinnati version). The short URL is http://bit.ly/12LU6s. I’m still trying to get the hang of their editorial guidelines, but I guess what I post there, I can post elsewhere, and vice versa, so here I’ll show you what I’ve already done, since I’m still not able to type too much. I’m not focusing on language for the Examiner, but I’m still not quite clear why the Oprah bit below was rejected because it’s not about “Cincinnati politics” yet the tax rebate item was allowed. So far, the health care bill item is still up.

            I should get a few pennies if I get enough Examiner clicks, and great oaks from little pennies grow, so clicks are appreciated.

Ain’t No One Happy If Oprah Ain’t Happy

An old philosophy exercise is this question:  If you get a hole in your sock and patch it, then you get another hole and patch it, and so on until you’ve replaced every original fiber in the sock, is it still the same sock you started out with?

            When Michael Jackson died, was he still the same person he was in, say, 1993, when Oprah Winfrey interviewed him? Clearly he didn’t want to be the same person.

            Why is he being mourned as a black hero? He didn’t want to be black. As the old joke goes, America is a wonderful country, where a poor black boy can grow up to become a rich white woman. He didn’t even want his children to have his own DNA, or any black DNA from their mother.

            Oprah Winfrey did not chime in with the chorus of memorial hosannas, although she throws in with every important or famous black person. The recent presidential election, when she supported Obama “not because he’s black, but because he’s brilliant,” left many of her fans feeling that she’s more about her black identity than her female identity. And certainly not about the issues.

            But her black identity has limits. Oprah’s 1993 interview touched on Jackson’s abusive father. According to one blogger, years after that interview she lost her temper when the subject of Joe Jackson came up. But the interview must have taken place before the first lawsuits against Michael Jackson himself

            Apparently Oprah doesn’t find Michael’s childhood abuse sufficient justification for his own (alleged) peculiar relations with children. Oprah was raped when she was a child and has zero tolerance for abusers, who ought to know better than anyone the pain they cause. This has to explain her silence on Michael Jackson’s death. Everyone wanted to pretend he was a black role model for young black men, but for Oprah, his money alone didn’t qualify him.

An Immodest Proposal

I have a proposal for an economic stimulus plan that will definitely get the economy moving immediately, and will be popular with everyone: Give full tax rebates to everyone. I want money to pay all my taxes — federal, state, local, and sales. And anything else that comes along. I think we could ease into this program with, say, 90% rebates, but just as Obama thinks it might take 10 years for his federal medical insurance plan to wipe out private insurers, we can give the government a bit of a margin and delay the 100% rebates for a few years.

Well, Flag Me

The White House wants to know if you receive scary e-mail about Obama’s health insurance plans. Go to the White House “Facts are Stubborn Things” blog site, where officially approved blogger Macon Phillips says the President has been consistent about his positions. If you get e-mails saying he hasn’t, the White House wants you to turn them in. They don’t want you to be upset by —

"scary chain emails and videos … starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to 'uncover' the truth about the President's health insurance reform positions. … There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

            If your neighbor disagrees with the official White House line — or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, “misunderstands” it — just let them know. If you know anyone who’s actually read the health care bill, report that to the White House. [Note: You can read the bill yourself online . They could have made it a lot shorter by single-spacing.]

            If you find any little inconsistency or change of position on the part of a politician or president, as unlikely as that seems, alert them. Then go flag yourself.

            What will the White House do with these e-mails and the names of the senders? Don’t know.

            And by the way, what color is that flag?

Apropos of flagging your e-mailers, here at home we just had another instance of someone asking to not receive e-mail from old friends who disagree politically and are “crazy”; no discussion of the issues wanted. In my experience, both active and passive, that’s always a one-way action: “liberals” (including myself in earlier years) do not want to discuss issues with people who have different opinions.

Boojie-Woojie

Here at PO, we’ve discussed floogy and floozy, but not boogie-woogie, and I haven’t told you the Little Richard story. In PO 331 I wrote: As for “floogy”, listening to the song by Slim Gaillard on YouTube, I discovered that the G in “floogie” is pronounced like J in jam, not G in good, making it a bit closer to the sound of “floozy”.

            We’d expect it to rhyme with “boogie-woogie” which has a hard G sound, but there’s an exception. I haven’t been able to locate this on YouTube or the Web, so I’m relying on my non-digital memory. Years ago I saw Little Richard on TV introducing the song “Don’t try to lay no boogie-woogie on the king of rock and roll” (I thought he had written it). I can’t find a recording by him online, but it was composed by Jeff Thomas. Little Richard told a story about being arrested in England for rocking lewdness or something like that, and the judge said he would not permit any of that “boojie-woojie” (J sound) in his town, mispronouncing it as well as confusing boogie-woogie with rock and roll. Long John Baldry also tells the story and sings the song but not with Little Richard’s verve and hilarity.

            Now let’s all imagine “Boojie-Woojie Bujle Boy of Company B”.

(Note: By the way, the Charlie F. who wrote to me about “Flat Foot Floogie” is Charlotte, not Charles.)

Coup

And a bit more on coup:

Bill R. reminded us of Chuck Berry’s:

As I was motivatin' over the hill

I saw Maybellene in a Coup de Ville

“ And it certainly wasn’t a coo-pay de Vil…” sez Bill.

Dave DaBee wrote:

To tell the truth, my first memory of the word in conversation was in summer 1958, when my family was about to leave on vacation, with a neighboring teen as our cat-herder / sitter. (5 kids, 8 and under, good job for a 16 year old.)  I was at her house when a bunch of other teens were there and a couple of guys mentioned a coup(e), and I (having seen how it's spelled) generously corrected them with coupay. You should have seen the looks these greasers gave this 8 year old punk. And the moment seems to have stuck with me for a half century. 

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.geocities.com/keithops/; 2009 issues are at http://cafelit.blogspot.com.. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Autochthonous on the 4th of July

I’ve written before about “Native American” meaning “Indian” (everything ought to be in quotes, I guess). I’m a native American since I was born here. Indians I’ve known preferred to be known by their tribal names: Pojoaque, Seneca, etc. Bryan Garner’s Daily Usage Tips provides some history:

The term "Native American" proliferated in the 1970s to denote groups served by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs: American Indians as well as the Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska. Later, the term was interpreted as including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and it fell into disfavor among some Indian and Alaskan groups, who came to prefer "American Indian" and "Alaska Native." Yet views are unpredictable: some consider "Native American" more respectful than "American Indian."
            As an equivalent to "American Indian," the phrase "Native American" was long thought to be a 20th-century innovation. In fact, the phrase dates back to at least 1737 in this sense. And it made literal sense then, since most people who had been born in the New World were indigenous — not of European descent.
            By the 19th century, when the term "Native American" was fairly common, it had become ambiguous, since it often referred to any person born in the United States, whether of indigenous or of European descent. …

            The phrase "indigenous American," which is more logically and etymologically correct, does have some support. …

            Meanwhile, the synonymous phrase "autochthonous American" hasn't ever caught on. No surprise there.

After looking up the roots of “indigenous” I can’t see that it’s logically or etymologically superior to “native” since they mean pretty much the same thing, as does “autochtonous”, as well as aboriginal or any other substitutes for “Indian”. The question is really, how many generations back did your ancestors arrive in America? Even the people called Indians are presumed to have migrated long ago over the Bering Strait or in boats from the South Pacific or even Asia, or possibly even from Europe. Maybe someone has a theory about South Americans coming from Africa. But I was born here under this government, and any Indians alive now were also born here in this era in this nation. There are only native Americans and immigrants. Unless you want to talk about “race”. Redskins, anyone?

Self Esteem + Relativism + Fake Diversity = Why Bother

Dave DaBee and I both choked on this Daily Writing Tips entry:

Why Bother About Correctness?

I often receive emails from readers who profess to see no reason to worry about standard forms of spelling or usage. I say “profess” because if they are reading DWT posts, they must care a little.

Here’s a recent comment:

does it really matter b/c everyone has their own way of speaking, writing, and thinking and the languages and “right” ways of spelling our only set up and there… truely their is no wrong or right way to spell because everyhitng was just though up by someone eles… such as books are thoughup by theirs writers…

On the face of it, this comment suggests that the writer does not assign much meaning to language or to thought. And there’s no reason that he/she should. According to some thinkers, the only meaning life has is the meaning we choose to give it. So no, in the grand scheme of the universe, it doesn’t matter if you spell truly with an e. The stars are not going to fall because of it.

Stars may not fall but other things will, both material and abstract, depending on the students’ courses of study. I’m not sure if Mr. Daily Writing Tips really thinks there’s no reason to assign meaning to language or thought, let alone spelling. If he’s being sarcastic, he’s not good at sarcasm.

            This idea that there is no right or wrong in language — or anything else — has become an educational principle in latter decades, and many of the newer teachers who got their degrees in this intellectual climate agree with the barely literate philosophy above, and their skills may be little better than that writer’s, who clearly is swollen with self-esteem.

[|||]  In Ak-Ron a couple of weeks ago, I had lunch with a former comrade in teaching arms who stuck it out a few years longer than I did. She said one of the last straws was when she intended to flunk a bright student who missed 27 classes and didn’t do the work. (Another straw was when the university wouldn’t allow the temp instructors to use the library between semesters.) The department passed the student anyway, without the instructor’s signature. That was about money; they were afraid the student would quit rather than re-take the class. I wonder what that student is doing now. My friend is still picking last straws out of her hair.

[|||]  Walter E. Williams wrote about the disaster of placing “diversity” above academics. You’d think Asian students would fill diversity quotas in universities, wouldn’t you? But no. They study too much, and if schools give priority to good students, they’ll have too many Asians. They’re not looking to diversify their athletic teams, though. I think there should be more 100-pound Asians in college football.

Obama’s Dreams

Jack Cashill has written further about his theories on the authorship of Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father.

            Mike Sykes, by the way, thought he detected a hint of snideness in my reference to Obama’s remarks on “vigorous debate” in Iran. It is true that he may have said that before the election and ensuing riots and killing, in which case I was being prematurely snide. Obama was merely suffering from premature congratulation.

            This week, O’ seems to have sided with the likes of Hugo Chavez and Castro in condemning a “coup” in Honduras, but it was not a coup, as a trained lawyer ought to know. The elected president was ousted by military, true, but they replaced him with someone from the same party, acting on the orders of the Supreme Court, because the president was attempting to subvert their constitutionally prescribed single-term limit and pull off a Castro/Chavez leader-for-life deal.

            Also in the O’news, Congress contemplates a law that would require people who choose not to buy health insurance to pay a hefty fine, say $1,000. I don’t know if that would be a repeating fine, due monthly, perhaps, until the finee pays up. People who can’t afford the fine will have it paid by the gov’t (taxes), but you’d think the gov’t would arrange for everyone’s health insurance to be paid automatically from the get-go to avoid the mess.

Out of the Surf

Kara DeFrias, bless her heart, has written an Ode to the Serial Comma, patterned after Shakespeare:

Part 1 (a la Romeo and Juliet)
‘Tis but thy serial comma that is my enemy;
Thou art punctuation, though not an agreed upon one.
What’s agreed? It is nor placement, nor style,
Nor usage, nor style guide, nor any other part
Belonging to a keyboard. O, be some other keystroke!
What’s in a name? That which we call a comma
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Writer would, were he not Writer call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Writer, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all thy commas.

Part 2 (Much Ado About Nothing)
He that uses a serial comma is more than a youth
And he that uses no serial comma is less than a man.

From this blog I also discovered Talk Like Shakespeare Day.

Bulwer-Lytton

Once again the results of the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest are in. I may have previously expressed my disappointment at not having won long ago with an entry having to do with an albino. But I can always try again, and you can too. The current winners are a bit formulaic. My favorite is one of the Dishonorable Mentions:

No man is an island, so they say, although the small crustaceans and the bird which sat impassively on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated lazily in the pool would probably disagree.

Glen Robins
Brighton, East Sussex, U.K.

That’s Personal Information

I got an e-mail advertisement from Amazon that started out: “As someone who has shown an interest in footwear…”

            That would be me, because I bought a pair of shoes from Amazon last year. But they make it sound so … creepy.

90

Writer’s Digest is celebrating 90 years of publication of articles like “Writing for the Talkies” (1931), “Writing Comedy for Jackie Gleason” (1966), and “Writing Light Verse Is Heavy” (1972). Check it out if you’re interested in type fonts and older styles of graphic art.

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